A New Beginning
by Saoirse Mooney
Summary: It will never get better – and the searing honesty of that is almost enough to cauterise the festering wound – but it will get easier to bear, in time.


He's had this problem ever since the bite. Everything ended, often before its time and almost always after somebody discovers what he is. He should be used to this by now, of course, but spending his adolescent and young adult years having friends, the first ever since his life had changed beyond recognition, had made him soft. At least one of those friends, since they'd become Animagi, have been with him at Full Moon every month. The knowledge that, from now on, he's alone (again, he doesn't say) is bitter.

His lost ones are vibrant, in his memory; he can almost kid himself – and has – they're still alive. James, now free of the majority of his boyhood arrogance and able to let his fundamental goodness show; few had such a loving heart as he. Lily, the one he had treasured for her capacity to see the goodness in him, even though he had long ago lost the ability to see it for himself. Remembering them brings untrammelled pain because to do so means thinking about _him_ – and he can't let himself think about Sirius, and what everybody says Sirius has done. The words to describe, let alone understand, the senselessness of it don't seem to exist for him; he doubts anyone else can do any better.

Remus neither knows nor cares how much time has passed since Dumbledore broke the news to him in the gentlest possible way. Time passing has always been an almost alien thing to him, anyway; all the days run together in his head and have done since he was a kid. From time to time, he's wondered whether he can blame this, too, on the bite. But it's not like time is the problem now, anyway; the problem is that, despite everything, he can't stop himself loving _him_. He's tried, of course; tried everything he could think of until he'd made himself ill with it.

He'll see Sirius in the street, from time to time, or believe he does; his rational mind knows it to be impossible, knows Sirius is in Azkaban, but the _Moony_ part of him – the wolf – has no truck with rationality, and Moony is the part of him who can't stop himself searching. It shouldn't surprise him that it turns out there are plenty of people out there capable of fooling a mind that is desperate to be convinced, but it does. He thinks each Sirius substitute is the one that will last; he's always wrong.

Later on, when the contradiction of appearing to conform to what the Wizarding world at large thinks of Sirius while still being in love with him comes close to breaking his mind, the illusory Sirius inhabits both waking and sleeping hours and bleeds through every part of his life no matter how hard he tries to keep them compartmentalised. Even the wolf seems to hallucinate Sirius' presence, in some way, by the time Remus admits to himself that he's in real trouble.

Dumbledore helps. He shows up on Remus' doorstep, for no clear reason, two weeks before Full Moon about three months after Moony has begun to hallucinate Padfoot's presence. Remus knows he must look like hell but, by that stage, he is past the point of caring; when Dumbledore starts asking questions Remus is aware the jig is up. He's suspected Legilimency involvement somewhere – this _is_ Dumbledore, after all – and yet although he knows, in theory, how to occlude he's so sick and tired of attempting to cope with everything that he makes no effort to try. In ways it's a relief, in the end, to let himself break – to admit to somebody else how he's tried and tried to stop loving Sirius but can't.

It had been all right, in the end.

"We don't choose who we love, Remus," is all the old man says, his gentle tone familiar from the terrible time he'd broken the news about Sirius. Something in him shatters at that – he's not sure whether it's the blessed relief of confession or the agony of having to remember the unbearable – and the next he knows he's weeping bitter, gasping, tears and Dumbledore's hand lies firm and heavy on his shoulder in wordless comfort.

Remus spends time with a Mind Healer for several months after that; paid for by Dumbledore at the latter's insistence. The best repayment, Dumbledore tells him the one time he pushes back about it – reluctant as he's always been to let his pride accept help when it's offered – is for him to heal enough to live again. For _himself_ – not for Dumbledore, or for anyone else. It will never get better, the Mind Healer tells him – and the searing honesty of that is almost enough to cauterise the festering wound – but it will get easier to bear, in time.

And, in time, Remus finds it does.

Not better; better is impossible. James, Lily, and Peter are never coming back; neither is Sirius. Harry is lost to his Muggle relatives too, at least for now, although maybe time and distance will also help ease that situation. But Remus is able, after a while, to be almost at peace with things.

Things aren't perfect, by any means. But Remus thinks being able to live again, able to separate his love for Sirius from the obscenity he's caused and thus still love him, is as good as it's going to get.

Maybe, just maybe, it's enough.


End file.
